Issue 2, 2023

Boosting the growth and aggregation of sulfide nanoparticles via regulating heterogeneous nucleation for enhanced sedimentation

Abstract

Sulfide precipitation is a favorable method to treat acidic heavy metal polluted wastewater. However, the treatment efficiency is hindered due to the low solubility of metal sulfides, which easily aggregate to form fine particles, thus making it difficult to separate the solid–liquid phases. Herein, crystal seed induction and mechanical strengthening were synergistically introduced to facilitate the growth and aggregation of CuS particles. The generated metal sulfide with the addition of active seeds grew via heterogeneous nucleation on the active seeds and supersaturation of CuS was reduced through mechanical strengthening to accelerate the growth of the particles. Further surface property analysis and the calculated results demonstrated that mechanical strengthening increased the hydrophobicity and aggregation of sulfide particles, which leads to a 5 times higher precipitation efficiency of metal sulfides. This work provides theoretical guidance for the growth and effective precipitation of metal sulfide nanoparticles.

Graphical abstract: Boosting the growth and aggregation of sulfide nanoparticles via regulating heterogeneous nucleation for enhanced sedimentation

Supplementary files

Article information

Article type
Paper
Submitted
04 Nov 2022
Accepted
09 Dec 2022
First published
28 Dec 2022

Environ. Sci.: Nano, 2023,10, 454-462

Boosting the growth and aggregation of sulfide nanoparticles via regulating heterogeneous nucleation for enhanced sedimentation

C. Li, W. Zhang, J. Wu, J. Liu, H. Wang, Q. Li, L. Chai, Q. Wang and Z. Lin, Environ. Sci.: Nano, 2023, 10, 454 DOI: 10.1039/D2EN01001A

To request permission to reproduce material from this article, please go to the Copyright Clearance Center request page.

If you are an author contributing to an RSC publication, you do not need to request permission provided correct acknowledgement is given.

If you are the author of this article, you do not need to request permission to reproduce figures and diagrams provided correct acknowledgement is given. If you want to reproduce the whole article in a third-party publication (excluding your thesis/dissertation for which permission is not required) please go to the Copyright Clearance Center request page.

Read more about how to correctly acknowledge RSC content.

Social activity

Spotlight

Advertisements